Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[shiv]

2. The shape or existence of PIE is not what determines the homeland of IE languages. It's the archaeological evidence that points to the eurasian steppe.

Bluff.

There is zero archaeological evidnece of PIE anywhere. There is zero archaeological evidence of any language at all in the steppes in teh graves and other findings suggested as "proof". They surely spoke some language. No evidence exists for that language along along with all the archaeological evidence quoted for IE. The history written by linguists and some archaeologist friends is pure conjecture, and calling it anyting more than conjecture amounts to lying.

This is a continuation of the bluffing that has become institutionalised in this game. This is what is cooked up.

[ManishH]

how anyone can express a South Asian retroflex phoneme in Akkadian Cuneiform if the phoneme did not exist in Hurrian? How does Witzel, linguist par excellence, expect to find that there? And how is its absence proof of anything? Witzel is a funny old buffoon. Manishji, any theories on this minus asterisks if poss?

Kannada language doesn't have the 'Z' sound, yet the script took the syllabogram for 'J' and put 2 dots below it to represent the Z sound. If indeed the Mitanni's were post vedic, they would have figured out a way to preserve the contrast between the retroflex 'ड' and 'द'/'ध'.

Absence of phonemes which are clearly later developments supports the fact that Mitanni language is a pre-Vedic form (albeit not necessarily pre-dating composition of Veda in India). IOW, the fact that Mitanni language is a pre-Vedic form in no way rules out OIT.

The detailed explanation of the phonetic principles can be found in any phonology textbook like Fortson or Clackson's. To take an example, take these cognates : Skt (mīḍha) , Greek (misthos), Avestan (mizda). If the Skt retroflex is the original, then Avestan mizda can derive from it but not the Greek unvoiced sibilant + dental stop - there is no regular condition for consonant clusters to lose voice. If Avestan -zd- is the original, then Skt retroflex -ḍ- can derive from it, but not Greek -sth- (again no regular condition to lose voice).

But if the original sound is (misdhos), then all three can independently derive from it. Eg. Greek can lose voicing of -dh- > -th- due to the affect of the unvoiced sibilant -s-. Proto-Indo-Iranian can gain voice s > z due to affect of voiced aspirated stop -dh-. The PIIr -zdh- can lose aspiration to become Avestan -zd- and in Skt, gain retroflexion to become -ḍh-

Reconstructoin all in phonetic laws of sound assimilation - which are nothing specific to Indo-European language family. Unlike what you, in your paranoia of Linguistic scholars want to believe, these principles derive from the mechanisms of human phonetic tract. Nothing to do with scheming ideological motivations to devalue Indian civilization.

I read Witzel's article and his problem is that he has not explained any of the phonetics behind his conclusions. Either he himself doesn't understand phonology (he is after all a philologist, not a linguist), or he just thinks it is obvious. I'm inclined to believe it is the former, because he doesn't even provide references to textbooks unlike his style of giving copious references.

PS: From a purely propaganda POV, it is easier to say "bluff/fake" ad-nauseam than to attempt to understand the depth and basics of human phonetic tract and how sound changes occur. Which is exactly what I predict shiv will do

[shiv]

Kannada language doesn't have the 'Z' sound, yet the script took the syllabogram for 'J' and put 2 dots below it to represent the Z sound. If indeed the Mitanni's were post vedic, they would have figured out a way to preserve the contrast between the retroflex 'ड' and 'द'/'ध'.

They "would have figured out a way"? manishji this is the sort of guesswork that is not science. It is conjecture. You are guessing what some people 3500 years ago could have done and rephrasing it as "would have done. Trying to pass off its absence as proof of something else is a bluff. When bluffing is institutionalised, you find it everywhere.

PS: From a purely propaganda POV, it is easier to say "bluff/fake" ad-nauseam than to attempt to understand the depth and basics of human phonetic tract and how sound changes occur. Which is exactly what I predict shiv will do

Do I detect a hint of irritation there? tut tut Manishji

Manishji, you keep talking about my ignorance and I will keep talking about your bluffing. There is one word for bluffing. And that is bluffing. Propaganda has its uses. Afer its work is done it will be considerd as "fact" like PIE even if it is conjecture being passed off as fact (bluff)

As a linguist who understands and uses words well, I am sure you will know the various ways in whcih words are going to be used, as propaganda or fact. If it is propagandaa, you who quote Sanskrit words about the truth should allow all this propaganda to flow off you like water over a lotus leaf no? No need to concern yourself about it. It will not affect the truth. It wil however remind people to look for bluff every time a linguist writes indian history.

[ManishH]

Bluff.

There is zero archaeological evidnece of PIE anywhere. There is zero archaeological evidence of any language at all in the steppes in teh graves and other findings suggested as "proof".

While no written evidence has been found for the ancestor PIE language (there were no scripts then), the principles used to reconstruct PIE have been repeatedly validated by discovery of inscriptions of languages in intermediate stages between PIE and Classical Historical languages. Eg:

1. Presence of laryngeals in Hittite
2. Presence of labiovelars in Mycenaean Greek

By repeating words like "bluff" you only show your ignorance of a technical subject and wish to just keep the discussion at the level of propaganda. Shiv is still flinching from technical details, just like he flinched from looking up a Sanskrit dictionary a couple of months ago.

You keep seeing sinister designs in a simple technical matter of phonology and decipherment of inscriptions. Thankfully, by now academics is quite immune to hectoring and the fact of the matter is - AIT is in Indian textbooks, no matter how hoarse the hectoring

Well, some people will see sinister designs behind the Polio vaccine. So Linguistics has good company.

[member_20317]

In any case, the linguists cannot argue away the fact that PIE is a made up language and thus is not falsifiable and thus is not science (of course, this presupposes that one subscribes to Karl Popper.
...
I would like both Manish ji and SN Rajan ji to address the bold'ed part above.

I'm fine if you are skeptical but two points to note:

1. PIE is not a "made up" language. The reconstruction is based on phonetics - the way human mouth determines how some sound changes are uni-directional. If you have a specific objection, illustrate with a specific example.

2. The shape or existence of PIE is not what determines the homeland of IE languages. It's the archaeological evidence that points to the eurasian steppe.

For millenia nobody knew of how the human mouth was supposed to be uni-directional. Everybody just assumed it had a tongue that was loose at one end, and free to roll around anywhich way.

My 11 month old son is happy (as in a mongrel in a meadow), when he produces sounds even without using the tongue, with just the movement of air through the varying plumbing in the body. I guess he cannot qualify as a Linguist.

[Arjun]

You keep seeing sinister designs in a simple technical matter of phonology and decipherment of inscriptions. Thankfully, by now academics is quite immune to hectoring and the fact of the matter is - AIT is in Indian textbooks, no matter how hoarse the hectoring

ManishH ji,

You have clearly stated on multiple occasions that linguistics is of no help in locating the Aryan Uhreimat. The basis of AIT is therefore in philological references found in the RV. Why are you yourself again mixing up AIT with phonology & linguistics?

[shiv]

Bluff.

There is zero archaeological evidnece of PIE anywhere. There is zero archaeological evidence of any language at all in the steppes in the graves and other findings suggested as "proof".

While no written evidence has been found for the ancestor PIE language (there were no scripts then), the principles used to reconstruct PIE have been repeatedly validated by discovery of inscriptions of languages in intermediate stages between PIE and Classical Historical languages. Eg:

1. Presence of laryngeals in Hittite
2. Presence of labiovelars in Mycenaean Greek

Salaam Aleikum sahib. You are teknically well versed. You said

It's the archaeological evidence that points to the eurasian steppe

Kindly indicate the archaeological evidence that you have given.

[member_20317]

ManishH ji, it is ok if you consider phonology and other birds of a feather (linguistics, philology) a 'Technical Subject'. That is a personal opinion.

But to state that "(there were no scripts then)" with then being some point in history that is not evidenced is a very strange claim.

You mesmerise me with utter technicalities.

[ramana]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo ... n_language

Indo-European studies began with Sir William Jones making and propagating the observation that Sanskrit bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin. In The Sanscrit Language (1786) he suggested that all three languages had a common root, and that indeed they might further all be related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to Persian.

His third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788) with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies. This is Jones' most quoted passage, establishing his tremendous find in the history of linguistics:

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.

This common source came to be known as Proto-Indo-European.

The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from Franz Bopp's Comparative Grammar (1833) to August Schleicher's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann's Grundriss published from the 1880s. Brugmann's junggrammatic re-evaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "contemporary" Indo-European studies.

PIE as described in the early 1900s is still generally accepted today; subsequent work is largely refinement and systematization, as well as the incorporation of new information, notably the Anatolian and Tocharian branches unknown in the 19th century.

Notably, the laryngeal theory, in its early forms discussed since the 1880s, became mainstream after Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1927 discovery of the survival of at least some of these hypothetical phonemes in Anatolian.

Julius Pokorny's landmark Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ("Indo-European Etymological Dictionary", 1959) gave a detailed overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated up until that time, but neglected contemporary trends of morphology and phonology (including the laryngeal theory), and largely ignored Anatolian.

The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins, Jochem Schindler and Helmut Rix) developed a better understanding of morphology and, in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie, understanding of the ablaut. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became certain enough to establish its relationship to PIE; see also Indo-Hittite.

Method
Main articles: Historical linguistics and Indo-European sound laws

There is no direct evidence of PIE, because it was never written. All PIE sounds and words are reconstructed from later Indo-European languages using the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. An asterisk is used to mark reconstructed PIE words, such as *wódr̥ 'water', *ḱwṓn 'dog' (English hound), or *tréyes 'three (masculine)'. Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages seem to have derived from such "protowords" via regular sound changes (e.g., Grimm's law).

As the Proto-Indo-European language broke up, its sound system diverged as well, according to various sound laws in the daughter languages. Notable among these are Grimm's law and Verner's law in Proto-Germanic, loss of prevocalic *p- in Proto-Celtic, reduction to h of prevocalic *s- in Proto-Greek, Brugmann's law and Bartholomae's law in Proto-Indo-Iranian, Grassmann's law independently in both Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, and Winter's law and Hirt's law in Balto-Slavic.

So PIE is a spoken construct and not a written language.

[Virupaksha]

Hold on, hold on

1) As Shri ManishH ji himself agrees, there is no written evidence anywhere.
If no written evidence exists anywhere for PIE, then there is absolutely ZERO archeological evidence of this PIE existing.
For me this is a tautology.

2) if there is absolutely ZERO archeological evidence of this PIE existing and even Shri ManishH ji agrees that this is a 20th century construct using the "gluttoral sciences" (in other words a language made up in one's basement), where then is ANY evidence that it was found in eurasian steppes as he eloquently put.

It's the archaeological evidence that points to the eurasian steppe

[ManishH]

You mesmerise me with utter technicalities.

It's a technical subject :-/ unlike scholastic debate, wherein hectoring always carries the day. That's the strength of the method and weakness too.

Strength: the study of human phonation gives a good idea of the relative order of these languages in IE language tree without needing 100% epigraphic evidence
Weakness: the inertia to learn the subject gives ample room for "denunciation" style hectoring.

[Virupaksha]

You mesmerise me with utter technicalities.

It's a technical subject :-/ unlike scholastic debate, wherein hectoring always carries the day. That's the strength of the method and weakness too.

Strength: the study of human phonation gives a good idea of the relative order of these languages in IE language tree without needing 100% epigraphic evidence
Weakness: the inertia to learn the subject gives ample room for "denunciation" style hectoring.

A wonderful exposition of how to use victim mentality in psyops using beautiful lucid writing. But my all time favorite in this art is somebody else.

[ManishH]

While no written evidence has been found for the ancestor PIE language (there were no scripts then), the principles used to reconstruct PIE have been repeatedly validated by discovery of inscriptions of languages in intermediate stages between PIE and Classical Historical languages. Eg:

1. Presence of laryngeals in Hittite
2. Presence of labiovelars in Mycenaean Greek

For Hittite epigraphic evidence, there is a nice online database maintained by a leading authority on Hittite cuneiform :
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/ ... abases.htm

For evidence from Mycenaean Greek see Chadwick, "The Decipherment of Linear B". Or his encyclopaedic multi-volume corpus of Knossos inscriptions.

You said

It's the archaeological evidence that points to the eurasian steppe

Kindly indicate the archaeological evidence that you have given.

You are losing context.

My post was on the subject of soundness of phonetic reconstruction methods behind PIE. Not about the homeland of IE languages. The fact is that predictions made by phonetic reconstruction methods were borne out by discoveries of epigraphs in languages that were intermediate between PIE and their historical forms.

This is evidence for the soundness of phonetic reconstruction.

[Arjun]

It's a technical subject :-/ unlike scholastic debate, wherein hectoring always carries the day.

Sheer BS. Even within the supposed 'technical' subject, many linguists have complained about being 'hectored' by other linguists who use precisely the same language used by folks here ('pseudoscience' etc). Just witness the way the Nostratic Theory & Euroasiatic Theory of linguists is being attacked by the Indo-European crowd.

[Virupaksha]

ManishH ji, Once again another bluff and hand waving.
You have given archeological evidence for Hititie and Mycaenean Greek, where as we asked archeological evidence for PIE.
We are NOT asking you to provide evidence for Hititie/Greek/Sanskrit.

You have said that you could provide archeological evidence for PIE in Eurasian steppe.

One of the major problems with these people is because they believe inherently most of the times without knowing in the tower of babel nonsense . That is why they have to go through the cyclical hoops and tie themselves into knots without being able to provide any logical proof.

Hyderabadi Urdu - a mixture of telugu, persian and hindi. i.e. instead of neat unidirectional trees, which always neatly diverge and have only parent, they cant imagine the language structure to be a graph. They do not have cases where a language might have formed by combining 2-3 different languages & do not follow the neat unidimensional graph they give out. Human language because of the effects of war, trade, climate, migrations and culture - are very complex and are just not going to be represented as below.

[member_20317]

Kindly indicate the archaeological evidence that you have given.

You are losing context.

My post was on the subject of soundness of phonetic reconstruction methods behind PIE. Not about the homeland of IE languages. The fact is that predictions made by phonetic reconstruction methods were borne out by discoveries of epigraphs in languages that were intermediate between PIE and their historical forms.

This is evidence for the soundness of phonetic reconstruction.

Predictions and Discoveries in the same sentence. Ok now lets say you have 100% 'Epigraphical evidence' say as of today, your homework is to tell us how languages would change 'x' point in time in future.

While we are at it can you predict the stockmarket too. Predicition as in the right way forward. In the direction of the Arrow of time

[RajeshA]

While no written evidence has been found for the ancestor PIE language (there were no scripts then), the principles used to reconstruct PIE have been repeatedly validated by discovery of inscriptions of languages in intermediate stages between PIE and Classical Historical languages. Eg:

1. Presence of laryngeals in Hittite
2. Presence of labiovelars in Mycenaean Greek

The presence of laryngeals in Hittite is still an open question, as to whether they were there before due to Indo-European roots or whether they were introduced due to the Semitic script they used and very close contact with speakers of Semitic languages.

I can remember that when I was a kid of 15, I used to pronounce गाँधी quite differently, the way the British used to pronounce it, as I had non-Indian English influence on me!

So if the Hittites started writing their language in the same Akkadian Semitic script and were surrounded by Semites, who used to pronounce the words written by Hittites in their language differently than as how they should have been pronounced in the Indo-European way, then after some time the Indo-European Hittites could have also adopted the Semite way of pronouncing their own Indo-European words!

So Hittites may have had laryngeals or not, but they may have nothing to do with Indo-European! No other Indo-European language has or ever had laryngeals!

The PIE-Charlatans are using some hypothetical laryngeals as a deus ex machina to solve their problem of making some mythical PIE into a parent language! If you can't solve a problem scientifically use magic!

So even though no other Indo-European language has any laryngeals, laryngeals would be shoved down the throat of facts, reality and science, to make a lie sustainable!

Truth is Indo-European languages NEVER had any laryngeals, and the sooner one exorcises this "black-magic" from Indo-European linguistics the better it is for real science.

[RajeshA]

Virupaksha ji,

The whole language tree is the big lie! Language Evolution cannot be represented in tree form!

The tree structure presented by the linguists is so to speak their self-marketing poster. It is meant to show the layman that their subject field can claim scientificity. There is structure to what they do!

The poster itself is however a big lie, as languages do not really have the hierarchical relationships as presented, and a more truthful presentation of relationships, would make their poster too complex, for them to be able to make any claims!

[shiv]

The detailed explanation of the phonetic principles can be found in any phonology textbook like Fortson or Clackson's. To take an example, take these cognates : Skt (mīḍha) , Greek (misthos), Avestan (mizda). If the Skt retroflex is the original, then Avestan mizda can derive from it but not the Greek unvoiced sibilant + dental stop - there is no regular condition for consonant clusters to lose voice. If Avestan -zd- is the original, then Skt retroflex -ḍ- can derive from it, but not Greek -sth- (again no regular condition to lose voice).

But if the original sound is (misdhos), then all three can independently derive from it. Eg. Greek can lose voicing of -dh- > -th- due to the affect of the unvoiced sibilant -s-. Proto-Indo-Iranian can gain voice s > z due to affect of voiced aspirated stop -dh-. The PIIr -zdh- can lose aspiration to become Avestan -zd- and in Skt, gain retroflexion to become -ḍh-

er Manishji I don't consult dictionaries. I use parrots to pick out cards. Now a little bird tells me that misthos in greek means wages. It also tells me that medha (Sans) and mazda (Avestan) are cognates meaning intelligence. You're not bluffing here are you?

[RajeshA]

Reconstructoin all in phonetic laws of sound assimilation - which are nothing specific to Indo-European language family. Unlike what you, in your paranoia of Linguistic scholars want to believe, these principles derive from the mechanisms of human phonetic tract. Nothing to do with scheming ideological motivations to devalue Indian civilization.

Fallacy: "these principles derive from the mechanisms of human phonetic tract."
Corollary is that sound changes because with time in a given population, people start pronouncing things differently, and this change is driven by the urge of ease of pronouncing the sounds!

Truth:
Sound changes between languages happen when a new human phonetic tract which has been conditioned differently tries to speak an alien language!

Sound changes when over a superstratum or adstratum language vocabulary a completely different substratum language intonation is applied!

Added Later: Language may change due to natural evolution, as pointed in the "fallacy", but the sound changes are expectantly not that radical or quick. Also natural evolution of language would be more pronounced among sedentary populations than populations/groups migrating through previously settled areas or through political and commercial domination by another group of immigrants or neighbors.

In the Eurasian Indo-European context we are speaking more about migrating populations/groups, hence the human tract cannot be the right guide!

[ManishH]

You have clearly stated on multiple occasions that linguistics is of no help in locating the Aryan Uhreimat. The basis of AIT is therefore in philological references found in the RV. Why are you yourself again mixing up AIT with phonology & linguistics?

Arjun-ji:

I was replying to this specific post which questions the validity of PIE and sound reconstructions. The post has no specific refutation, just general skepticism about the subject.

viewtopic.php?p=1334185#p1334185

I tried to explain that PIE makes sense by illustrating with an example, how sound reconstruction is made.

So even if it doesn't give us help in locating the IE (not Aryan) homeland, why is it worthwhile to study PIE and sound reconstruction ?

The answer is 3 fold:
1. Sound reconstruction gives us a good idea that all these Historical languages like Sanskrit, Greek, Avestan, Tocharian are indeed children of a common ancestor. The cognates have well behaved sound correspondences. IOW, it is not happen-stance that Sanskrit pada is Greek podi.
2. None of these Historical languages can be the parent language
3. Study of regularity of sound change in IE language vocabularies indicates that words for 'chariot'/'horse' were not loanwords or wander-woerter (like camera/TV etc are); but intrinsic part of the vocabulary. So the PIE speakers were already domesticating horses and making chariots before the dispersal started.

#3 specially is crucial to correlating with archaeological evidence of horse domestication and chariotry in the Eurasian steppes that indicates a homeland for IE speakers there.

Arjun-ji: Nice to see you lose the invective.

[ManishH]

er Manishji I don't consult dictionaries. I use parrots to pick out cards. Now a little bird tells me that misthos in greek means wages. It also tells me that medha (Sans) and mazda (Avestan) are cognates meaning intelligence. You're not bluffing here are you?

With due respect, I request you to reread the post.

If you cannot make the simple distinction between Sanskrit 'mīḍha' and 'medha', I cannot help you.

Whenever it comes to specifics, you start fumbling.

[RajeshA]

3. Study of regularity of sound change in IE language vocabularies indicates that words for 'chariot'/'horse' were not loanwords or wander-woerter (like camera/TV etc are); but intrinsic part of the vocabulary. So the PIE speakers were already domesticating horses and making chariots before the dispersal started.

#3 specially is crucial to correlating with archaeological evidence of horse domestication and chariotry in the Eurasian steppes that indicates a homeland for IE speakers there.

Arjun-ji: Nice to see you lose the invective.

ManishH ji,

Are there any papers out there publicly available which make the case that chariot/horse were not loanwords or more interestingly were NOT Wanderwörter! It would interest me to know based on what criteria, the scholars have come to this conclusion!

[shiv]

If you cannot make the simple distinction between Sanskrit 'mīḍha' and 'medha', I cannot help you.

No need to get all uptight sir. I am talking about medha and mazda which are totally relevant to the Mitanni texts and what Witzel wrote. I have a hard copy of Apte's dictionary and midha is not listed. But you are unlikely to believe that.

If Greek does not have a cognate related to medha and mazda we ARE bluffing aren't we? Or at least trying to mislead? Having used the examples do you now want to cop out and give me a walkover?

[ManishH]

My post was on the subject of soundness of phonetic reconstruction methods behind PIE. Not about the homeland of IE languages. The fact is that predictions made by phonetic reconstruction methods were borne out by discoveries of epigraphs in languages that were intermediate between PIE and their historical forms.

This is evidence for the soundness of phonetic reconstruction.

Predictions and Discoveries in the same sentence.

Please read it in the same way you'd read "Higgs Boson was predicted before it's existence was borne out by discoveries made in laboratory experiments".

Ok now lets say you have 100% 'Epigraphical evidence' say as of today, your homework is to tell us how languages would change 'x' point in time in future.

While we are at it can you predict the stockmarket too. Predicition as in the right way forward. In the direction of the Arrow of time

This is nothing to do with predicting future.

[shiv]

If indeed the Mitanni's were post vedic, they would have figured out a way to preserve the contrast between the retroflex 'ड' and 'द'/'ध'.

Absence of phonemes which are clearly later developments supports the fact that Mitanni language is a pre-Vedic form (albeit not necessarily pre-dating composition of Veda in India). IOW, the fact that Mitanni language is a pre-Vedic form in no way rules out OIT.

You spend too much effort over-sensitively protecting phonetics and miss all the logic and facts that require no knowledge of phonetics to find gaping lacunae in the Aryan migration theory.

Of the 15 Indo European words in the Mitanni and Kikuli documents, exactly which one lacks a retroflex phoneme that exists in Sanskrit? I seem to have missed finding that word.

You see, if cuneiform lacks the means of expressing a retroflex phoneme, the simplest explanation is that it has been used mostly to write Hurrian. Most of the text is Hurrian and hundreds of named gods include only 4 names recognizable from the Rig Veda.

From this data how can any human being, linguist, philologist, archaeologist or ignoramus say that Indo European came though Syria, developed the concepts of the Rig Veda and then went to India? Yet that is what David Anthony claims. Witzel, by judging the Mitanni language to be older uses that as proof of the timeline of migration of horse, chariot and language.

I have not understood how finding 15 words in Syria could mean all that. Surely a few marauding princes from India and a horse trainer or two may have temporarily occupied places of power in Syria, having come briefly out of India leaving behind a miniscule trace of their very short presence in the area.

If on the other hand you are unable to point out any Indo European word in the Mitanni/Kikkuli documents that should_have_had a retroflex phoneme, it means Witzel is putting up a strawman by making it up. Institutionalized b______ (fill in the blanks)

Whichever way you look at it, the evidence for migration towards India is not existent from 15 Mitanni words. As you rightly say, it could mean something out of India though.

[ManishH]

3. Study of regularity of sound change in IE language vocabularies indicates that words for 'chariot'/'horse' were not loanwords or wander-woerter (like camera/TV etc are); but intrinsic part of the vocabulary. So the PIE speakers were already domesticating horses and making chariots before the dispersal started.

#3 specially is crucial to correlating with archaeological evidence of horse domestication and chariotry in the Eurasian steppes that indicates a homeland for IE speakers there.

Arjun-ji: Nice to see you lose the invective.

ManishH ji,

Are there any papers out there publicly available which make the case that chariot/horse were not loanwords or more interestingly were NOT Wanderwörter! It would interest me to know based on what criteria, the scholars have come to this conclusion!

Rajeshji,

This blog has a nice summary ...
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=994

I've posted briefly in this thread on this subject.

Another thing about wander-woerter is that they tend to make their way during the wanderings into unrelated language families. Eg. Camera etc have made their way into Finno-Ugric, Arabic, Dravidian, Sino language families too. But IE cognates of horse, wheel and chariot vocabulary somehow don't go outside the IE family; not even to the neighbouring Finno-Ugrics.

Another point to consider is that if the OIT claim for Arabian horse import into India was true, the fact that Arabic word for horse ('hasAn') is totally unrelated to IE ek̂wos or cognates in it's daughter languages, totally runs counter to that.

[Neela]

Hyderabadi Urdu - a mixture of telugu, persian and hindi. i.e. instead of neat unidirectional trees, which always neatly diverge and have only parent, they cant imagine the language structure to be a graph. They do not have cases where a language might have formed by combining 2-3 different languages & do not follow the neat unidimensional graph they give out. Human language because of the effects of war, trade, climate, migrations and culture - are very complex and are just not going to be represented as below.

Indeed. Bold part above neatly summarizes it. And that is the lesson I can take home after all these 100 pages.
There are far too many influences and parameters and it is an exercise in futility. What irks me is that there are so many coulda-shoulda-wouldas scattered in bombastic language that it makes me suspect that some intentional fuzzying up is going on.


IMO, etymology should be the border for linguists. And they should be fenced/caged there . They should be called for references alone but should not at any point, be made to make calls on events that happened and more importantly for setting timelines. They, to quote an oft repeated sentence here, add just noise.
The efforts required to date and describe historic events are better spent on searching for archaeological and scientific evidence than relying on those who make surmises and guesses without moving an inch!

[Abhibhushan]

I am not into phonology, but, can some learned one tell me how the English word school becomes sakool in Punjabi and iskool in Bangla/Bhojpuri as borrowed words? What immutable law of phonolgy causes this differential mutation?

[member_20317]

Please read it in the same way you'd read "Higgs Boson was predicted before it's existence was borne out by discoveries made in laboratory experiments".

This is nothing to do with predicting future.

ManishH ji, that is exactly how I understood it.

Higgs Boson existed in the universe before the quantum theory came along, then quantum theory came along a point where it found that Higgs Boson should be detectable at a certain region with an error margin 'x' and then the lab experiments detected it as such.

Exactly like in your case where 'vocal apparutus' and 'languages' which constitute the Linguists' universe already exist. The 'linguistic laws' which is the Linguists' quantum theory exist. I am even throwing in the '100% epigraphical evidence' that you can benefit from. Now I had only asked you to theorise the result of the lab experiment that I wish to do. I want to test if 'your Higgs Boson' which is equivalent to the next turn in language, happens or not, at the point you say, with the error margins you prescribe.

Also since you have an objection regarding the prediction of the future, I will now only ask you to tell me how a native would utter the following sentence, as translated into some Indo Aryan languages that you have not learnt.

The sentence is - 'The quick brown fox jumps over the little lazy dog'

This should take out your objection regarding predicting the future. Also I will take your word about the languages you have not learnt.


I am droping the stock market part since you say languages are predictable while my take is markets are not and I could have saddled you with the Stock market bit only if I believed it was a predictable animal.

[ManishH]

If you cannot make the simple distinction between Sanskrit 'mīḍha' and 'medha', I cannot help you.

No need to get all uptight sir. I am talking about medha and mazda which are totally relevant to the Mitanni texts and what Witzel wrote. I have a hard copy of Apte's dictionary and midha is not listed. But you are unlikely to believe that.

If Greek does not have a cognate related to medha and mazda we ARE bluffing aren't we? Or at least trying to mislead? Having used the examples do you now want to cop out and give me a walkover?

...

You spend too much effort over-sensitively protecting phonetics and miss all the logic and facts that require no knowledge of phonetics to find gaping lacunae in the Aryan migration theory.

Of the 15 Indo European words in the Mitanni and Kikuli documents, exactly which one lacks a retroflex phoneme that exists in Sanskrit? I seem to have missed finding that word.

First, there are much more than 15 IA words in Mitanni documents. Dumont himself found 44 proper names.

Second, you are mixing up two things. My example took a different sound change (Greek misthos, Avestan mizda and Sanskrit mīḍha and Mitanni miśtannu) to explain how sound change points to relative order of languages in the language tree. This is where the retroflex phoneme of Sanskrit is missing and the 'older' sound of sibilant + dental stop is found in Mitanni text.

I'm not talking about Witzel's example. Reading Witzel's article, he is talking about the "-zdh- > RV edh" which is as seen in Mittanni priiamazda that is again an older form than ṛgveda's priyamedha.

[ManishH]

iskool in Bangla/Bhojpuri as borrowed words? What immutable law of phonolgy causes this differential mutation?

It's called 'epenthesis'. Also exhibited by native spanish speakers of english.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis ... wing_words

[Rahul M]

I am not into phonology, but, can some learned one tell me how the English word school becomes sakool in Punjabi and iskool in Bangla/Bhojpuri as borrowed words? What immutable law of phonolgy causes this differential mutation?

the phenomenon for the later is called 'oponihiti' if I remember my bamandeb's bangla byakaron for class X.

[Arjun]

Another point to consider is that if the OIT claim for Arabian horse import into India was true, the fact that Arabic word for horse ('hasAn') is totally unrelated to IE ek̂wos or cognates in it's daughter languages, totally runs counter to that.

Arabic word ?? I think we seem to have totally lost all sense of chronologies out here. We should be talking about Sumerian or Elamite - Arabic language developed millenia afterwards.

The Sumerian word for horse was si-si, and it has been suggested by linguists that this word was a borrowing from Aswa.

In any case, the Steppes as homeland for IE languages does not necessarily follow from the horse/chariot word argument.

This is Koenrad Elst's account of how the OIT case also aligns with the evidence on horse/chariot words: The Horse Evidence

[ManishH]

Arabic word ?? I think we seem to have totally lost all sense of chronologies out here. We should be talking about Sumerian or Elamite - Arabic language developed millenia afterwards.

Please. Sumerian and Elamite are totally different from the Semitic language family from which Arabic developed. Note that one of the jumbled OIT theories postulates that India imported the Arabic horse.

Sumerian did borrow some semitic vocabulary via Akkadian influence and that's that.

The Sumerian word for horse was si-si, and it has been suggested by linguists that this word was a borrowing from Aswa.

Sumerian 'sisi' has a perfectly good native etymology - it is reduplicated form of 'si' to stand. See
http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/SUM_PRS.htm

It is Sumerian 'assa' which is a borrowing.

[shiv]

First, there are much more than 15 IA words in Mitanni documents. Dumont himself found 44 proper names.
<snip>
Second, you are mixing up two things. My example took a different sound change (Greek misthos, Avestan mizda and Sanskrit mīḍha and Mitanni miśtannu) to explain how sound change points to relative order of languages in the language tree. This is where the retroflex phoneme of Sanskrit is missing and the 'older' sound of sibilant + dental stop is found in Mitanni text.

I'm not talking about Witzel's example. Reading Witzel's article, he is talking about the "-zdh- > RV edh" which is as seen in Mittanni priiamazda that is again an older form than ṛgveda's priyamedha.

In other words Manishji, you were providing me with a beautiful answer that I cannot disagree with but which has no bearing on the issue of Mitanni or Witzel. I am fascinated that you provided me with a non answer along with a descrition of your opinion of my ability.

Why is zdh (Av) older than edh (Sans). Isn't a judgement of older and younger "chronology" even if it is not glottochronology

I don't want to nail you for what you did not do, but clearly Witzel is holding up a strawman when he talks about lack of retroflex phonemes in the 15 or 44 words that prove that there is no connection with India.

What the hell is misthos anyway?

[shiv]

Another point to consider is that if the OIT claim for Arabian horse import into India was true, the fact that Arabic word for horse ('hasAn') is totally unrelated to IE ek̂wos or cognates in it's daughter languages, totally runs counter to that.

Hmm interesting. The problem crops up only if you insist on horse+language as one inseparable unit. If the horse was already known in an Indian language but imported from Arabia then no such problem arises.

You too seem to be fixated with the idea that the horse and language came together to India.

[Arjun]

So even if it doesn't give us help in locating the IE (not Aryan) homeland, why is it worthwhile to study PIE and sound reconstruction ?

The answer is 3 fold:
1. Sound reconstruction gives us a good idea that all these Historical languages like Sanskrit, Greek, Avestan, Tocharian are indeed children of a common ancestor. The cognates have well behaved sound correspondences. IOW, it is not happen-stance that Sanskrit pada is Greek podi.
2. None of these Historical languages can be the parent language
3. Study of regularity of sound change in IE language vocabularies indicates that words for 'chariot'/'horse' were not loanwords or wander-woerter (like camera/TV etc are); but intrinsic part of the vocabulary. So the PIE speakers were already domesticating horses and making chariots before the dispersal started.

#3 specially is crucial to correlating with archaeological evidence of horse domestication and chariotry in the Eurasian steppes that indicates a homeland for IE speakers there.

ManishH ji,

There are problems at several levels with the whole application of linguistics to AIT Theory. Which is why you see the variety of views attacking you at each of these levels on this thread. Btw, divergence of views is present within the linguist community itself as to the validity of each one of these-

1. Validity of grouping current languages into 'Genetically Similar' groups and denoting them as a language family
2. Validity of the comparative methodology that is the core basis of reconstructing historic languages from current ones
3. Validity of arriving at a clean 'tree structure' for language relationships based on comparative methodology
4. Validity of reconstructing a proto-proto language from two proto-languages, both of which are speculative and not attested to
5. Even assuming all the above are taken as axioms, the validity of assuming that PIE can be assumed to belong to a specific place and time, when many of its constituent words could have belonged to different timelines and different regions
6. Even assuming PIE at a particular region and time are taken as axiomatic - the implications of pre-dispersal lexicon on identification of IE homeland

Frankly there is enough grounds to dispute linguistics evidence in relation to AIT/OIT at each one of the above levels. But it seems to me that even at level 6 (ie PIE at a particular region and time is taken to be valid) the evidence against OIT does not hold up. You have not refuted Elst's OIT thesis which I posted earlier, that takes into account Asva and Indian horse evidence.

[Arjun]

Please. Sumerian and Elamite are totally different from the Semitic language family from which Arabic developed. Note that one of the jumbled OIT theories postulates that India imported the Arabic horse.

The horse trade would have involved intermediaries & Sumer / Elam are the most obvious ones assuming a land route. In any case, this is peripheral to the larger issue which is - ELst's OIT hypothesis explaining Asva (The Horse Evidence) stands in the absence of a clear refutation from you.

[Rahul M]

Manish ji, if horse is indeed 'hasAn' in whatever the ancient omanites spoke (is it ??) then it sounds very similar to aswa to my ears, whatever the make believe theories of linguistics might say.